I think there's a difference from, say the Motoons, or the Draw Mohammed Day, in that burning is just destroying. If you burn something you stop people reading it.

The Koran should be better known. Arguing against it, satirising it, comparing it with the Bible or the US Constitution, even setting it to music, are good ideas.

Burning it, flushing it, banning it�are not.

Both approaches�provoke Muslims to violence, but only one has the potential to provoke non-Muslims - and maybe Muslims - to thought.

I'm uncomfortable with the pressure Pastor Jones is under as well. I don't like the insinuations that he will have blood on his hands if he goes through with it. To him, the burning is a statement and only a statement. To Muslims it's much more - the desecration of their fetish object. He's not responsible for their perception or likely over-reaction. He's just making a statement and is free to do so in this country.

I don't like people burning the American flag, but the Supreme court ruled it protected speech - end of story. People need to stop losing their minds over this and leave the man and his congregation alone.

No blood on his hands at all. Any bloodshed is entirely the fault of the killers, that goes without saying, as does his right to protest.

It's just that other forms of protest would be more effective. Burn the Koran and nobody knows what's in it. Show the Koran for what it is and put it to shame.

It doesn't have to be either-or.  Pastor Jones could read copiously from the Qur'an for the benefit of the assembled media, teaching the kuffar a little of what they need to know, and then set it on fire.

I understand the point about this being a teaching moment and agree with that, but I believe the hand-wringing over this is not about the missing teaching part, but about the burning part.  Whatever else Pastor Jones does, people don't want him to burn the Qur'an.

Well yes, he could do that and if he wants to that's fine. But how would he play it? "This book is evil and don't touch it" or "This book is evil and read it for yourselves (and JW and NER) to see what I mean".

This guy can do what he wants, but the burning will, I think, generate more heat than light.

Maybe he should, after demolishing the Koran, light a match and say, "I could burn this but I chose not to ..."

I guess what bothers me is the way anti-jihadists have, to use the tired cliche, thrown Pastor Jones under the bus, and turned him into a pariah in order to present themselves as "moderate" anti-jihadists.

At some point, I will support the right person burning or otherwise defiling a Qur'an under the right conditions.  I don't consider defiling a Qur'an to be beyond the pale.  I don't consider it to be any more "extreme" than what other religions (assuming that Islam can be considered a religion) in the U.S. have to put up with.

I will support the creation of a "Piss Mohammad" sculpture, or a statue of Mohammad made of elephant dung, or a South Park episode mocking Mohammad and Allah, or any of the other indignities that all religions other than Islam have to endure.

I don't personally appreciate the creation of artwork made purely to shock, but if our society's artists are going to make it, we need to spread the shock evenly.  The laws of any one religion or ideology cannot be allowed to make itself immune from criticism and ridicule, especially by using threats of violence and actual violence.

The land of kuffar must make it clear that we will remain the land of kuffar, and that we will continue to express our freedoms, no matter how uncomfortable that makes some members of society.  Gay leather parades,  anti-and-pro-abortion-rights rallies, NAMBLA gatherings, Qur'an defilings, military parades, KKK rallies, and so forth;  there's something to offend everyone, but we have to defend it all.

And that includes burning a Qur'an.  With a prefatory lesson about Islam, or without.